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Inspection of imported meat, though tighter, is still loose
International shipments of frozen meat must bear a certificate of safety. Additionally, imports are inspected by the Veterinary Agency before they are cleared through customs clearance. How, then, can ‘dirty meat’ penetrate Vietnam? Tuoi tre concludes that the problem lies in the way the officials examine the imports.
Just five minutes to test samples
Tuoi tre reporters went to Cat Lai Port in HCM City one October day to join representatives from an import company, port staff and customs officers observing veterinary officers as they took samples from a consignment of imported meat. The representative from import company urged the veterinary officer to hurry, for it was 11:30 and he feared the testing could not be completed before the lunch break.
When the door of the container was opened part way, some boxes of chicken fell out. A veterinary officer climbed into the container, stepping on the fallen chicken. Collecting several of the boxes near the door, he took the meat to his laboratory. The container’s door was shut again. This took only five minutes.
Under the current regulations, samples of frozen meat must be taken at random from the front, middle and back of the containers. However, in fact, the sample was taken only from the place closest to the container’s door.
When asked about this, the Veterinary Agency Zone 6’s officials said that to get meat from deep inside the container, it would be necessary to unload goods. If the frozen meat cannot be preserved at minus 18°C, it will spoil.
Tuoi tre asked a prominent meat importer in HCM City if that’s true, and was told it is quite possible to take samples from any place in containers without harming the meat. Meat frozen to minus 18°C is rock-solid. The importer said it never takes more than 20 minutes to test meat samples, not long enough for the meat to thaw.
Nguyen Xuan Binh, Director of Veterinary Agency Zone 6 (the greater HCM City area), confirmed that in principle, samples must be taken from three different places in every container.
“The required process is very strict, but corners are cut in the implementation,’ Binh admitted. He explained that there are just four officers in charge of taking samples for testing, while hundreds of containers of frozen meat reach the port every month and every container contains thousands of smaller boxes.
Where is the imported ‘dirty meat’?
Government agencies have admitted that some consignments of meat that did not pass inspection have vanished without a trace.
A meat importer in HCM City called this unsurprising. Sometimes, enterprises take the rejected frozen imports from cold storage at night, when no veterinary officials are present. They may remove 10 tonnes of meat from the cold storage, but report five tonnes only.
The importer said flatly that it is easy for enterprises to ‘steal’ low quality imports to sell on the domestic market.
If you want the system to work properly, the importer said, the Veterinary Agency ought to lean on the owners of cold storages. These owners keep careful track of the volume of meat held in storage in order to calculate the storage fees. If government agencies check the records and discover fraud, they can suspend a warehouse’s permit to store meat.
There are about 50 cold storage facilities scattered across the city, said Phan Xuan Thao, head of HCM City’s Veterinary Office, not counting various ‘ghost’ (unregistered) facilities. Therefore, it is very difficult to control the quality of frozen meat at the storage facilities. Every facility holds hundreds of tonnes of meat and other frozen foods, and as it is very cold inside, veterinary officers hesitate to inspect them regularly.
vietnamnet, tt
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